Mark Ritson – Brand Communications

Mark Ritson: Advent of the Christmas campaign blitz

Mark Ritson

We’ve never had anything like Superbowl advertising in this country. In the US, the four-hour finale of the American football season is as much about watching the ads as the contest itself. Every American brand aspires to be part of the biggest annual event in marketing.

Mark Ritson: Why marketers are socially stupid

Mark Ritson

You’d have thought social media departments would have learned their lesson by now. Whenever you run a Twitter campaign that asks consumers to complete the sentence “I love Brand X because…”, all it usually achieves is an avalanche of eager piss-taking from bored consumers keen to offer their mates a giggle and give marketers the kicking that they are deemed to deserve.

Facebook

Mark Ritson: Brands are people too – so says Facebook

Mark Ritson

Interesting times at Facebook. It filed for an IPO last month, which means the company is well on its way to listing on the New York Stock Exchange and a lot of Facebook employees are about to become multimillionaires. On the down side, however, the company must now report publicly on its performance to potential investors.

Mark Ritson: Brand equity must drive communications

Mark Ritson

In the past decade, several big consumer brands – in particular Stella Artois, Cadbury and Guinness – lost sight of the priority of branding over communications. Put simply, the advertising tail began to wag the branding dog to the detriment of long-term brand equity. I highlight Stella, Cadbury and Guinness because their loss of direction […]